Browsing: Society

A Brief History On September 7, 1876, the infamous James-Younger gang attempted to pull off a bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, but an alert and irate group of citizens quickly armed themselves and foiled the robbery, killing three of the robbers and wounding others. Digging Deeper Frank and Jesse James eluded capture, but two Younger brothers were caught and sent to prison.  The gang had previously served the Confederate States during the American Civil War as “bushwhackers,” basically land based pirates attacking and robbing Union forces and anyone believed to be Union sympathizers. Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton explained why…

A Brief History On September 6, 1939, the Battle of Barking Creek in the skies over England became an historic event for Britain’s RAF, the first loss of an RAF fighter plane and fighter pilot during World War II.  Unfortunately, this “combat” was a mistake, as radar operators misidentified the blips on their screen as enemy aircraft when in fact those menacing blips flying toward the English coast were actually RAF Hurricane fighters. Digging Deeper Spitfire fighters scrambled to intercept the supposed enemy and promptly shot down a pair of the incoming Hurricanes, killing one of the unfortunate pilots.  Such…

A Brief History On September 6, 1997, two to two and a half billion people worldwide were glued to their TV sets watching the funeral of Princess Diana, a similar number of TV viewers that watched the 2009 funeral of pop rocker Michael Jackson. Digging Deeper Did you realize funerals were much bigger television events than Super Bowls?  In fact, the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II of the UK ranks Number 1 on the list of most watched TV events with a staggering 5.1 billion viewers worldwide! The opening ceremonies of the 1996 and 2008 Summer Olympics drew 3.6 and…

A Brief History On September 1, 1939, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man famous as the “father of the atomic bomb,” along with his student, Hartland Snyder, using the physics of the day, published a definitive proof of how black holes could develop. Digging Deeper The scientific paper known as the Oppenheimer–Snyder model relied on earlier work by Albert Einstein, especially vis a vis the Schwarzschild metric concerning gravitational forces involved in the collapse of stars leading to black holes. Educated at Harvard, Christ’s College and Cambridge, Oppenheimer became a professor at Berkely in 1936.  His contributions to the field of…

A Brief History On August 30, 1936, the Blue Riband was awarded to the RMS Queen Mary for the fastest transatlantic crossing.  The Queen Mary made its maiden voyage earlier that year, serving until 1967, including transporting troops during World War II, as many as 16,000 passengers on a single trip, a record that still stands. Digging Deeper The Blue Riband eventually went to the SS United States in 1952, but the 81,000 ton Queen Mary over a thousand feet long, along with her sister ship, the RMS Queen Elizabeth, were the standard of luxury until their retirement. Instead of scrapping…